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Rex Morgan, M.D., 9/15/06

As is too often the case with this feature, the current Rex Morgan, M.D. storyline started strong and then meandered around a bit before fizzling out, taking way, way too long to wrap up. To sum up for those of you who rely on me for your Rex Morgan plot news: Rex’s boytoy Troy turned out to be a con-man named “Adam” who skipped town rather than go back to prison; Troy/Adam’s beard wife was left devastated but determined to carry on with the children’s clinic; the blackmailer was gunned down by a SWAT team, though we were assured in a half-hearted way that she’ll survive; and little Sarah’s “mystery illness” turned out to be a bruise she got when she was accidentally knocked over by the dog, but she didn’t want to rat the poor pooch out because she was afraid that she (the dog, not Sarah) would get sent back to the pound. And now we’re ready for more vaguely medically-themed adventures next week. Still, the last couple frames here are a poignant little moment between a husband and wife who have a complicated relationship and a big secret that they can’t talk about, even with each other. Presumably tomorrow’s strip is just going to feature Rex sitting alone at his desk, sobbing “Troy!” over and over.

Shoe, 9/15/06

Yeah, see, this is the sort of thing that would be funnier if all the characters in the strip weren’t, you now, birds. I mean, couldn’t the dialogue in the second panel just as easily have been, “Can you catch bird flu from any of the other characters in this strip, seeing as they’re birds and all?” Do you think that the artists have been drawing them all as birds for so long that they’ve forgotten?

Given the occasional conservative politics that bubble up in this strip, the punchline perhaps should have been, “Can you catch treason from the Dixie Chicks?” It would have been just as funny.

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Shoe, 8/31/06

The punchline of this joke is at once bland, hackneyed, vaguely sexist, told better elsewhere, and immediately forgettable — classic Shoe, in other words. Of more interest to the comics student is Roz’s wide-eyed, head-bobbling reaction. She looks like the Perfersser just told her that the Health Department is planning to shut her diner down because of a psittacosis outbreak, not because she’s just been fed some dumb “male birds are from Mars, female birds are from Venus” shtick. (By the way, Perfesser, girl birds have feathers, not hair.) Is she not used to this sort of lameness? How long has she been in this damn strip?

The Phantom, 8/31/06

I have to admit to being a little dissapointed with the conclusion of this Phantom storyline, with the Ghost-Who-Yuks-It-Up-With-Midgets seeming pretty blasé about allowing Chatu the Shirtless Terrorist to escape and shirtlessly terrorize another day. Now we know that, for the Phantom, the big thrill is not bringing bare-torsoed ne’er-do-wells to justice, but instead setting things up so that you can really screw with their heads a few years down the line.

Luann, 8/31/06

Hey, everybody! The Toni and Brad Show’s back! Just like we’ve all been waiting for all this time! Right? Right?

Right?

[awkward silence]

In an effort to say something nice, I’ll say this: I like the way Reddy’s eyes are cast sarcastically to the right in the first panel. I’m imagining an elaborate series of electrodes attached to Brad’s ape-like mug so that the li’l safety robot can display a full panoply of lifelike facial expressions.

Mary Worth, 8/31/06

And heeeeere comes the bludgeoning.

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Dick Tracy, 7/5/06

I’m beginning to suspect that this Dick Tracy storyline is an extended apologia for the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program; thus, it’s somewhat ironic that it brought up the subject of the U.S.’s secret monitoring of terrorist financial activities weeks before the New York Times did. Still, one begins to see their point: if our terrorists enemies are as dumb as Al Kinda here — who, while sitting in his Washington, D.C., office, changed from Western clothes into some sort of costume from a touring dinner-theater production of Sinbad the Sailor, and then greeted the entire al Qaeda network by name on his enormous wireless phone — then they probably won’t be smart enough to realize that they’re being spied on until they read about it in the liberal media.

Shoe, 7/5/06

Speaking of morons dressed in ridiculous outfits, here’s today’s Shoe. I have to admit that I’m charmed by the idea of some kind of Shakespearean method actor who refuses to change out of his costume, ever. Apparently, despite the fact that the vast majority of stage productions in this country feature contemporary characters dressed in essentially street clothes, the artist felt most Americans would fail to recognize Ye Olde Birde as an actor without this faux-Elizabethan getup, even though he utters the words “my” and “play” (in that order) in the first panel. This is a troubling assumption, but, sadly, it’s probably a safe one.

Mary Worth, 7/5/06

Ooh! Ooh! Mary Worth is being stalked! Mary Worth is being stalked! By, apparently, the world’s dumbest stalker, who appears to be standing approximately fifteen feet away from her and thinking, “Nobody can see me! Why, that branch is barely three feet above my head! I’M INVISIBLE! MOO HA HA HA!”

Oh, and: mustache, light hair — is our sinister fellow erstwhile Dawn Weston paramour/effette intellectual snob/violent rage addict Woody Hills? Dare to dream!

Slylock Fox, 7/5/06

I’m less interested in these so-called “facts” about peanut butter (no doubt supplied, along with a generous honorarium, out the deep pockets of the American Peanut Butter and Peanut Products Council) and more in the little tableau that accompanies them. From the look on the face of the groovy, hippie headbanded chick, she’s about to hit her breaking point. I’ll bet when she visualized her future as a young girl, it didn’t include dealing with a couple of buck-toothed freaks (are they brothers? father and son?) fighting over a condiment while she cleaned up after them. All I can say to Greedy McSandwicheater is that he’d better clean up those globs of peanut butter he’s spilled on the table, because that knife is temptingly close to his throat.